


if i ever loved you, if i knew your name

by blindbatalex



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Future Fic, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, and the aggressive avoidance of quotation marks, anyway the author is needy, but it has cuddles!!, come for the angst stay for more angst! and the beach!, cuddles are nice right!, it's like a layer cake of angst this fic, nothing explicit though, please feed the author with comments, sad old men reminiscing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 18:28:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13576413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blindbatalex/pseuds/blindbatalex
Summary: Brad’s head is a familiar weight on Patrice’s chest. His warmth, what’s left of his cologne - everything slots into place, like when you turn on the radio sometimes and a song you once knew by heart starts playing. And you haven’t listened to in years, haven’t even thought about it probably, and the notes still thrum to the beating of your heart, like no time has passed at all.Or, Patrice remembers the one last time he cuddled with Brad, years ago.





	if i ever loved you, if i knew your name

**Author's Note:**

  * For [beanmused](https://archiveofourown.org/users/beanmused/gifts).



> _~ I’m leaving the table / I’m out of the game / I don’t know the people / in your picture frame / If I ever loved you, oh no, no / It’s a crying shame /If I ever loved you / If I knew your name. ~_ Leonard Cohen, Leaving the Table.
> 
>  
> 
> Written in response to a "last cuddle" prompt from tumblr. You asked for ansgt and I delivered!

Patrice wonders later when they stopped. Wonders whether what they had was really just born out of necessity - linemates clinging to each other in a league harsh and hectic and unforgiving - and he wonders how he let time and distance get the final word.

They are walking on the beach in Halifax, him and Tuukka, and there is one night Patrice’s mind keeps wandering to, that hurts more to remember now than the rest of the firsts and the lasts and the bests combined.

 

 

It’s an away game in Pittsburgh - must be towards the end of his last season with the Bruins and it’s an ugly thing. They sweat and toil on the ice, chase after every puck, and they return with nothing to show for it, defeated and bruised and second best. 

Someone decks him hard in the third period. He lands on his knee awkwardly and his knee revels in the opportunity to remind him that he isn’t young anymore. A has-been, a voice he has desperately tried to quiten whispers in the back of his mind and the future looms in front of him - what weighs heavy on his chest doesn’t even feel like foreshadowing anymore. 

Brad sits next to him on the bus to the hotel. 

The snow has gotten bad outside since the puck drop and coach has decided it’s not worth risking a flight out tonight, when it will be delayed by hours and they are all knackered. Patrice catches him looking at his knee a couple of times but he doesn’t ask - he knows Patrice too well for that. 

They shuffle silently through the corridors - or maybe they joke as usual - Patrice doesn’t remember anymore (and it doesn’t matter.)

His room is first. _Good night_ , Patrice says, taking out his key. Brad doesn’t leave though, not yet, just mills about in the hallway. Maybe he has noticed the slight limp in Patrice’s step. Maybe there is something he wants to say. Patrice turns to him, and he remembers perfectly well how tired Brad looked under the fluorescent lights even now - his hair falling down in strands to his forehead, lines around his eyes - though he is younger he isn’t immune to time either, none of them are. 

_God_ , Patrice jokes, _what a night to spend some quality time with your failures in a cold and vast bed, eh?_

Brad snorts and a tiny part of Patrice’s heart sings in response, elated at the happy sound his joke drew. Brad scrubs at the floor with the heel of his shoe.

_How weird would it be if we didn’t? Like the old times?_

He is looking Patrice in the eye. Patrice feels his eyebrows rise halfway to his forehead. Like the old times, when they used to--

They used to sneak into each other’s beds on the road once, a long time ago. It had started out as a dare, like almost everything else with Brad, and Patrice found soon just how much he craved raking his fingers through Brad’s hair at night, waking up to find Brad hoarding all the pillows in the morning.

They had fooled around once or twice too, then, and it had been nice, though they never sat down and talked about it. And then he had met Steph and Brad had met Katrina and that had been that.

 _Nothing like, inappropriate,_ Brad says now with a half shrug. _Just--_

Patrice doesn’t let him finish. He simply leads the way in and holds the door open for his friend. It’s the greatest idea he has heard in a while, the thought of company, of Brad, already filling him with warmth - Brad doesn’t need to explain, not to him.

There is a moment where they stand at the foot of the bed, unsure and rusty after years of limiting their hugs to the ice. 

_Come on, we look like two teenagers about to have sex for the first time,_ Brad says with a shit eating grin. 

_Don’t know about you but my first time nowhere near involved a bed this sweet,_ Patrice retorts, and the moment is broken just like that, and they are two friends hiding under the covers together once again.

 _How do you want to do this?_ he asks Brad once they have stripped out of their shirts and hopped onto the bed.

Brad takes it as his cue and slides down on the bed until he can comfortably rest his head on Patrice’s chest, an arm hugging Patrice across his middle. 

_Just let me know if I’m hurting you,_ Brad says quietly. He isn’t. Patrice tells him so and wraps an arm around Brad’s shoulder too, draws him in close so that they are lying with no space between them, their bodies pressed together. 

_Let the bastard go too easy,_ Brad mutters to himself. Patrice can feel his jaw clench against the thin layer of his own undershirt. 

Brad’s head is a familiar weight on Patrice’s chest. His warmth, what’s left of his cologne - everything slots into place, like when you turn on the radio sometimes and a song you once knew by heart starts playing. And you haven’t listened to in years, haven’t even thought about it probably, and the notes still thrum to the beating of your heart, like no time has passed at all.

He runs a hand through Brad’s hair and Brad leans into the touch. _Not your fault the ref got there before you could drop the gloves._ It was heartwarming really, the way Brad charged into the guy like a bull that has seen red, sent the him away with a good bruise or two as well. To know someone has your back like that.

Brad makes an unhappy grunt, softened by the way his face is plastered against Patrice, (and if Patrice dares think it the way he melts in his arms whenever Patrice used to stroke his hair like this.)

The thing is though he doesn’t know for how much longer-- or he knows, rather, and something aches deep in his chest at the thought, urgent and without hope.

The wind is still howling outside and in the quiet that descends onto the room Patrice can hear the patter of snow against their window. He wants to tell Brad how much he will miss this as sleep claims them both, how much he has missed it already.

 

 _When was the last time you spoke to him?_ Tuukka asks quietly. The ocean is just as dark as the sky and it batters the shore, angry and unforgiving. Wet sand clings to the hems of their dress pants, gets into their shoes. Patrice wants to say it’s been too long, that he has meant to text Brad since forever, ask when he was coming up to Quebec but he can’t get himself to form the words.

There is one last text from Brad in his phone, from a few months back, the natural stopping point of a conversation they started on something hockey or another.

**Whatever, you still suck old man. Give my best to Steph & the kids!!**

He stops walking and Tuukka follows suit. They stand side by side, gloved hands buried deep into their coats, cheeks frozen from the wind, and gaze at the ocean. 

_Does it matter?_

Patrice thinks he can just make out a ship on the horizon if he squints enough. 

_It doesn’t._

Tuukka’s brow is knit together, his jaw clenched. He is angry, Patrice realizes, but it’s a quiet kind of fury. There are no sticks he can smash against a goal post, no defensemen he can yell at to make it better now.

 _I don’t know how long it’s been since I last talked to you before--_ Patrice says in a quick burst. Tuukka turns to him; his blue eyes are not any less sharper now that they adorned with creases, just sadder, and they carry a hint of defeat that would have been unthinkably out of place once. Patrice tries to swallow past his dry throat. 

_Come back to Quebec with us after. Stay for a few days._

Tuukka nods, slowly, and it’s all Patrice can do to draw him in for a hug, to bury his face in Tuukka’s shoulder. 

They stay like that for a while, two old men on an empty beach who time has rendered irrelevant long time ago, holding each other in the face of the inevitable. Seagulls caw in the distance and night is beginning to fall just over the horizon.

**Author's Note:**

> This is legitimately the saddest thing I have written in a while and I don't know why I am like this either. Anyway, if you have read the whole thing for some reason and liked it, I would love to hear your thoughts. Comments - even the short single line ones - are what keeps me writing. <3
> 
> \--Also please be my friend on [tumblr](https://blindbatalex.tumblr.com/). I am super new to hockey and need more bruins mutuals! (I love it when people send me prompts too!!)


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